I believe I might have underestimated my body, just a little bit.

Do you remember how I said I was going to try not to sleep for one night? I did try and when dawn came to my window I was not even a little bit sleepy. So I waited until it was night. Seeing how well I was, I extended the test to two nights, still not tired. Then it as three and then four, then more.

It's been about 13 months, or 1 year and 3 months, since the last time I slept and I still feel perfectly fine. Sure I feel a bit tired sometimes if I don't eat but otherwise, I'm good.

To not sleep is a very weird experience when you have always slept before, at first you're kinda happy because you have more time to do what you want but you also have a sense of loss.

Sleeping is not just about laying down on your bed unconscious and waking with more energy than before seven hours later, or about letting your body some time to process everything that happened that day. No, it's also about taking a pause, closing your eyes just a moment to take some distance with this reality who can be exhausting at times. It's also a time for dreams, to reach the unreachable just for a night.

But I think I slept long enough in the past to deserve at least some free time.

These 13 months were not used pointlessly. I know how to read and write, not perfectly, obviously but I get better and better each time I finish a new book.

Obviously, I also trained my magein, the results are pretty impressive.

The first thing I did after being comfortable enough with the language was reading a book about the world, and it was not disappointing.

The name of this world is Fyr and even if it's not completely explored, much to my pleasure, it's already bigger than Earth, a lot bigger. From what I've read and the map I saw it's at least three times larger.

I'll not take time to wonder how everyone and everything is not on the ground because of the gravity this place should have. This world wants to break physics then let it do that as much as it wants I don't care!

Anyway.

For the time being, there are 9 continents on the world map or 'Great lands' as it is named in the books: Kirze, Sojol, Dremila, Evrey, Mebilis, Dacre, Geller, Malute, and Veolsra. I said "for the time being" because there may be more of them out there as the world is not completely explored yet.

No one ever accomplished a world tour to this day.

Evrey is the continent where the country I live, Arelm, is and without surprise, it's the one I found more information about. Its a really big land, slightly less vast than Europe and Asia reunited.

Humans or "adaleum", mostly live here as it is depicted as their motherland. Sure you can find some on the other continents from time to time, but in some places, they are so rare that the people living here don't even know humans exist. In fact, the only humans you will find outside of Evrey are either zealous adventurers or wandering master mageisters who want to discover more about the world; It's thank to those people we have texts about the lands across the seas.

The reason why humanity is kind of stuck on Evrey is because of the lack of appropriate transports.

Sure the technology is pretty advanced but regarding transport, it's not. Ships are simply not good enough to sail on great distances, and planes, or any flying vehicles, are mentioned nowhere.

Sure, it's possible to fly when you're skilled enough with magei but unless your magistein can fill a lake of hyperdense magein. Crossing an ocean is unthinkable except if you want to meet the fishes during the journey.

The reason for this problem from I've learned reading the [Compendium of Adaleum's craft] written by Adrek Biaf, a series of books gathering every bit of knowledge about human's technology, is magei.

Technology evolved with the magei and magein is the main and almost only source of energy, the other one being coal but it's rarely used.

I don't know a lot about magein that's true but I know for sure that energy whatever its form is, has pros and cons and that you can't do everything with it.

Magein, to be used in machines, need to be crystallized first. To do that factories exist but that only for the less potent one.

Indeed you can put as much magein as you want in a crystal but the more you put the more intricate it becomes to keep from going unstable and exploding. It's like playing Jenga, using more magein means making a taller tower which gets trickier to maintain stabilized.

To things like fridges, stoves, lights, etc. the mass-produced ones are enough but the moment we get bigger, carriages being a good example, the crystals have to be created by the hands of proficient mageister.

Someone may think that for a ship you just need to bring a lot of crystal but if it was that easy someone would have already done it. You can't do that for two reasons: first, to launch the machine you need a certain amount of magein present in the crystal and you can imagine that the amount a ship needs is surely not the same than a carriage moreover this " launch magein" is needed every time you change crystal as the machine is off the moment it doesn't receive magein.

Second, it's the price of the crystals. Even if you somehow resolve the first problem you still have them and the cost of even only one crystal is astronomic and you need many.

In my opinion, the only reason for this boat problem is because is everything is about magein. Oil, steam, geothermal, none of those energies are used or even discovered.

Unless someone finds a solution to this transport problem it's unlikely humanity gets truly in contact with other continents.

As for the other continents, I still didn't read any specific books on them but I know that Mebilis the nearest one is inhabited by another sentient beings, the woman who discovered them described as four-legged with a fur they can manipulate to some extent, thanks to this ability they can use tools and enjoy living standards similar to us on Evrey. She named them "Mebilum".

As for the second nearest, Geller, the group of mageister reported no sign of intelligent life or life at all. It's just an endless desert of frost. The same group will probably come back in a few years to tell what they saw as they are still there, exploring.

Anyway, Evrey is separated into 28 countries but only six are really important, the 22 little nations created by the ancient conflicts and generally specialized in the production of one or two products such as the magein crystals of Goss. The 6 countries nicknamed the "Roots", as they are basically keeping Evrey alive are: Melkey who could be called the nerve center of magei in Evrey as a lot of scholars go there for their studies, Arelm is the leader in engineering, Faldra a country with a big hand on sea resources, Aumor is known for its agriculture, Gelnisse and finally Hoviqure. The last two have nothing unique but are still among the richest.

Arelm being the country I read the most about, I can give more interesting information about it especially thanks to another book of Adrek Biaf who is quite the big name here in Arelm, [Arelm, a realm of history].

300 years ago this country was part of an empire with four of its current neighbors, the high empire of Aladran. It was a pretty prosperous one but the problems started when the emperor died, died without an heir. He is talked as a hard worker who would say he still had time to make a child over the years.

Sadly he died at 43 of a disease nobody detected because he never really took seriously his physical state before it was too late, saying it was because of his work reported the imperial physician of the time.

This caused conflict among the ones seeking the throne. Thus, years of conflict across the empire occurred, while some duchy took their independence amidst the chaos.

In the end, things escalated and only a few survivors among those forces survived when they didn't simply detach themselves from the empire. The empire lost so many lands it wasn't able to call itself as such anymore; if it wasn't for the forces left who were in favor of a republican regime instead of a monarchy, Arelm would still be under the reign of a king.

Those conflicts kept going for approximately 20 years before a real government was put in place and the land given its actual name.

The first government was, to be honest, pretty bad at governing but the state of the country at the time, after all the conflicts, was dire too.

A lot of lands became inadequate to grow crops, too damaged by the battles. To resolve this problem Arelm allied with Aumor to receive food in exchange for manufactured tools created by the families of master crafters. It's thanks to this alliance Arelm became what it is today.

As the years passed the kingdoms and empire dissolved into countries and the number of countries extended and with it the alliances.

Eventually, it was decided to create the "Adaleum's council", as humanity was and still is basically united. Each country would specialize in one area and help the other.

As everyone needs something of someone else, no one would betray unless they wanted to be ignored by all. This policy works remarkably well.

Arelm started to get fully dedicated to machines even if locally, cities kept their tradition like Urald and its spice or the umbrellas of Aorl, the capital.

While others focused on magei like Melkey.

The political state of Evrey didn't change much since a hundred years or so. Obviously, at times, there are groups of people trying to take power with a coup but it never lasts long.

Dad also told me about the land itself. The main reason there are so many crafters here is thanks to the mines. A long time ago, Arelm was a volcanic area, a magein spewing volcano.

Magein exists naturally but for it to take a physical form requires special conditions and this volcano apparently met them. The lava was full of magein and when the volcano finally exploded, every bit of rock covered ended up covered in lava.

After countless years the ores of the region ended up infused with magein which give them interesting characteristics like for example better conduction of magein.

Methods exist to infuse ores by hand but they substantially harder or longer than creating a crystal Dad told me.

That the gist of I've learned, I skipped a lot of boring stuff.

Now, comes the interesting part: my improvements.

My body is in far better shape than before, it seems to develop along with my magein.

The way I use to improve the quality of my magein is pretty simple. I gather every bit of magein I have in my heart and press it as much as I can to only have the purest magein and let the magein left disperse in the air.

This method doesn't make me faint but leaves me to feel weakened as I take even the magein in my muscle, that why I do it at night.

Moreover, this process is very slow. I only observed interesting results after 2 months of doing it.

I also train my body to get more and more efficient with magein and even keep magein's effects even if devoid of it. To do that I fill all my muscles with as much magein as I can then I let it out after keeping it for some time. Doing that leaves me with painful cramps but gotta suffer for power right?

And I already ripened some fruits of my progress. While before I lost almost all my strength when my muscle was devoid of magein (for the first exercise), now I lose only half of it.

Obviously, I didn't forget to train my control outside my body. I can now extend my magein about 50 centimeters around me while keeping good control.

I don't know how fares other people but I think I'm doing a pretty good job so far.

Oh, Mom is calling me.

"Sweetie comes down to get your breakfast or you will be late!" Mom yelled from below.

I gotta go! Today is my first day of school.